Vehicle to vehicle communications are attracting more attention recently, partly as a result of developments in certain areas, for example intelligent transportation systems (ITS) for dedicated shorter range communications, and wireless ad hoc networking.
A vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication network allows vehicles to talk to one another. A related type of network is a vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication network, which allows vehicles to talk with roadside infrastructure, such as roadside units. Vehicles and roadside units are communicating nodes in these V2V and V2I networks. The nodes may exchange information for one or more purposes, for example including but not limited to providing safety warnings (e.g. actual or potential vehicular collision warnings), cooperative driving information, traffic information, traffic control, driver assistance, or policing functions.
V2V ad-hoc networks and are sometimes referred to as VANET. These ad-hoc networks typically have a distributed network architecture, and lack a central controller. In these types of networks, resource management is usually an important consideration. Resource collisions, caused by two nodes trying to use the same resource in an overlapping fashion, and uncontrollable delay are just some concerns in these types of networks, particularly in relation to safety related communications or other high priority communications, which may require fast and reliable transmission.